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Johnny writer inspired me to post this - he has a folder he calls "drivel" and I need to get one all my nonsense stuff either gets deleted or hangs around my various project folders looking dejected and generally lowering the tone of the place - what sort of stuff would be in your "drivel" folder - I'll start off - I had a whole sub-plot thing about a voodoo girl with links to the IRA - seriously - and for a while I actually believed it might be useable - talk about deluded!!!
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Perhaps I should give up writing seriously and release a book called "The Drivel Files" you'll find it in Waterstones under humour, or more likely, Poundland under 'reduced'.
Hmm, you've set the bar fairly high with voodoo and the IRA, datco.
I think the worst content is the wealth of awful poetry that would give the Vogons a run for their money.
Some of the notes in there are so obscure that I think an alien must have written them - they don't even sound like my ideas.
Or, more importantly, ring any creative bells.
In my notebook there was one idea that seemed brilliant at the time- but I was having a hypo at the time I started writing it down, and as my muscle control went it became a blur of lines and squiggles and totally unreadable. b-(
I've never done it but I suppose it's one way.
It would probably save a lot of bother if I renamed 'My documents' as 'My drivel'.
Did me own maths for my age (40):
I've been alive for 477 months, that's,
284 dog years, or,
14,797 days, or,
2,113 weeks.
I have been alive for 0.04054 millenniums.
This thread has suddenly taken a surreal turn... (not complaining - it's made me smile)
frogs dancing to Sinatra
because they like it
There you go, a rare glimpse into 'The Drivel Files'
Bad Haiku is the tip of the iceberg.
If you like haiku I can direct you to an excellent teacher, who does live near me and who does it over the internet. But I have to warn you, I got 12 professional poets together to do the course as I was so fed up with children's anthologies filled with poems claiming to be haiku, it was a 6 week course, one poet dropped out i despair, and at the end of the 6 weeks what we knew was that it is VERY difficult, and that most people who claim to be able to write them, can't. They don't even know what they are.
I have a file of drivel haiku.
And one that has THREE real haiku in. That's the sum of my 7 years learning how to write them.
My three are in books.
3 images. The 3rd image makes sense of or illuminates the other two. They have to be images, they have to be nature, there must be no personal opinion - the haiku images are received by the reader and made sense of, you don't tell anyone what it means in the last line, except by the image. And there's about a gazillion other things.
Seaview is brilliant at them.
I studied Basho many years ago, so utterly brilliant, it put me off.
I just like writing 5-7-5 nonsense, it helps when I'm feeling uninspired - I don't know why I keep them really.
It is really a way of thinking, I've been on Renku walks with Alan Summers (the teacher) and when you are in a group and you go round and notice things in a particular way it is much easier, especially with an expert to advise and tell you why one isn't a haiku and one is.
I recommend that if you ever have abit of money to spare, it doesn't cost much and is great fun.